On this day in 1940 Louis Peraino was born. He was a Colombo Crime Family mobster but also a film producer known for his production of adult films. He would spend time in and out of jail in the 70’s and 80’s, eventually dying of lung cancer before the new millennium in 1999.

On this day in 1940, Louis Peraino was born into a world where the lines between organised crime and legitimate business were already deeply blurred. A made member of the Colombo Crime Family — one of New York's notorious Five Families — Peraino would carve out a peculiarly unique niche for himself, operating at the intersection of the Mafia underworld and the emerging adult film industry of the 1970s.

Peraino came from mob royalty of sorts. His father, Anthony "Big Tony" Peraino, and his uncle Joseph Peraino were both deeply entrenched in Colombo Family operations, giving Louis a foundation firmly rooted in organised crime from an early age. It was this family infrastructure that would prove instrumental when Louis turned his attention toward film production, bringing with it the muscle, money, and ruthlessness that the Mafia had long applied to more traditional rackets such as loan sharking, gambling, and labour racketeering.

His most notorious venture came in 1972, when the Peraino family bankrolled the production of Deep Throat, the hardcore adult film that became a cultural phenomenon and one of the most profitable films ever made relative to its budget. Produced under the banner of their company Arrow Films, the film reportedly cost just $25,000 to make and went on to gross tens of millions of dollars. The Colombo Family ensured distribution through strong-arm tactics, with theatre owners across the country finding it difficult to refuse showing the film. Investigations would later reveal that the profits were funnelled directly back into Mafia coffers.

The financial success of Deep Throat drew the inevitable attention of federal authorities. Louis Peraino faced multiple obscenity charges throughout the 1970s and 1980s, spending considerable time navigating the criminal justice system. Convictions and legal battles followed him relentlessly, as prosecutors sought to dismantle the criminal enterprise that had quietly built a small empire from adult entertainment. He was never far from controversy or courtrooms during this period, and his legal troubles effectively curtailed what had become a surprisingly lucrative parallel career to his Mafia activities.

Louis Peraino died of lung cancer in 1999, never quite escaping the shadow of either his criminal associations or his infamous contribution to American cinema. His story remains one of the more bizarre chapters in mob history, a reminder that organised crime has always followed the money — wherever that money happened to lead.